Alone in the Cold
by roofietoof
Summary: Starbuck and Apollo trapped in a storage closet. Oh my.


Two people stood in a storage closet on the starboard side of the ship and yelled through the closed hatch.

"What the hell do you mean 'we're stuck here'?" Starbuck screamed at the people on the other side of the door.

"They're mag-locks, Lieutenant. Set on a timer." Tyrol shouted at her through the metal. "Doors won't open unless they've been programmed to."

"Well, program them to open!" She yelled back.

"We can't override the original program." Gaeta chimed in from the hallway outside. "It's a safeguard. Didn't you notice the damage in that closet?"

"Well, a thin sheet of metal foil is the only thing keeping us from being sucked out into space through the gaping hole in the wall, so yeah. I guess you could say I _noticed._" She hissed.

Tyrol responded quickly. "The damage is from when the Cylons boarded us, and when you shut the door, the environmental computers thought that the room was being depressurized again, so to protect the rest of the ship they automatically sealed the hatch until the program could be sure that the venting process was over."

"When will the computers unlock the door?" Asked the other person stuck in the room with Starbuck.

"Twelve hours after the safeguard was enabled." Gaeta replied.

"We've only been in here for forty-five minutes!" Kara exclaimed, thoroughly annoyed.

"Well." Tyrol chuckled. "I'd settle in for another fun-filled eleven hours. It'll give you time to learn to read the caution signs that were posted all over the door."

"Thanks, Chief." She huffed and then she turned to the person next to her and sneered. "This is all your fault."

Lee Adama's mouth dropped open. "How exactly is this _my_ fault?"

"You're the one that closed the door."

"How the hell was I supposed to know that I shouldn't shut it?"

"The big red and white striped sign on the door that said DANGER: DO NOT CLOSE should have been your first clue, _genius_." She huffed as she sat down on a plastic crate.

Getting annoyed with his immediate company, Lee shouted back through the door. "Chief, aren't we in danger?"

"Not really, Captain." Tyrol answered back. "I mean it's not exactly R&R, but its breathable atmosphere."

"I feel a breeze." Apollo yelled. "And its frakking freezing in here."

"The foil may be flimsy, but it's keeping it oxygenated in there. And the cold's not bad enough for hypothermia to set in." Gaeta replied. "There's really no threat, you're not in any _real _danger."

"And what about the threat of me ripping him apart with my bare hands?" Starbuck hissed as she looked at Apollo pointedly. "_That's_ a real danger."

"Hey." Tyrol grumbled amusedly. "What you guys do for fun in there is your own business."

Lee looked away from the door and down at his co-captive. "If it's anybody's fault it's _yours_."

"Excuse me?"

"_I'm_ not the one that dragged _you_ into this condemned hole-in-the-wall, or hole-in-the-ship, as it were. Come to think of it…… why _did_ you drag me in here?"

"Because I wanted to scream at you in private!" She snapped and watched him scoff at her in disgust. "What? You prefer that I scream at you in _front_ of people?"

"No!" He snapped back. "I'd prefer that you not do it at all. I'd prefer that for once in your life you'd remember your rank and station on this ship and show me some respect because I'm your superior officer."

"Only by rank." She mumbled.

"Oh, go to hell, Kara!"

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

"My gods." Cally said on the other side of the hatch, walking up to hand Tyrol the gage that he requested. "Are they gonna be okay in there?"

"Yeah." Gaeta replied. "The room's not dangerous."

"I'm not talking about the _room_." Cally said. "I'm talking about the two people _in it._ Are you sure that they'll both still be alive in twelve hours? I mean you can practically hear them through the whole ship."

"Hush." Tyrol interjected noticing someone walking towards them.. "Here he comes."

"What's the sitrep?" Commander Adama gruffed as he came to stand before them.

"Sir," Gaeta replied. "As I mentioned over the com, Captain Adama and Lieutenant Thrace are stuck in this storage compartment until the enviro-controls disable…….11 hours and 8 minutes from now."

"Can _you_ disable it?"

"It's a safeguard. It's inherently built into the system. The only way to disable it is to manually shut it down and that might disable the entire starboard side of the ship…….."

"……and I'd rather not have that happen if the Cylons come calling. Can you go in through the air ducts?"

"It's compartmentalized; designed to seal off if that section of the ship were irreparably damaged." Tyrol interjected. "The air ducts are only inches wide."

"We _could _split the door. Go through it with a torch saw," Cally admitted. "But it would take a while."

"I'd rather not split a door and use that kind of equipment in a volatile section of the ship that's only 400 ft away from the tylium tanks." The Commander sighed, taking off his glasses. "You sure there's no threat?"

"Yes sir." Gaeta nodded. "They'll just be uncomfortable."

"It'll do them some good." Adama muttered disgustedly.

"Excuse me?" Tyrol chuckled in amazement.

Adama held the bridge of his nose. "They've been at each others throats for weeks. They'll either work this out or they'll kill each other. Either way, my ship will be a lot quieter." The Commander put his glasses back on, shrugged and walked away.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

"Are you okay?" Lee asked softly after he heard Kara's soft shiver, but still didn't look at her.

"Well, let's see…. I'm tired, I'm hungry, this room is only slightly warmer than the moon that I crash-landed on a few months ago and I'm stuck in here with the most anal, repressed, judgmental man that ever lived. _Yeah,_ I'm just _great._"

"Fine." He said sliding down the wall behind him until he was sitting.

"Big old sign, Lee. Bold letters, bright striped colors. It had everything short of flashing neon lights that said '_HEY! Don't shut this! Lee Adama, that means you!'_ How could you not see it?" She screamed.

"Maybe the blinding rage that I felt for you at the moment was obscuring my vision." He screamed back.

"Whatever."

"Great." He sneered and then paused as he rested his head against the wall. "Why were you gonna scream at me, anyway?"

"I never needed a reason before. Besides, you yelled at me first."

"The CAG is allowed to yell at one of his pilots. It's in the rules."

"And Kara Thrace is allowed to yell at Lee Adama, that's in the rules too." She turned her face so that he couldn't see her expression. "Or at least it used to be. I used to be able to yell at you about anything. I used to be able to scream and cuss at you about anything. Little things, things that got me angry, things that weren't even about you."

"Yeah, well, it's different now. They _are_ about me. It's different now that all your anger is pointed at me like a drill boring a hole through my skull. And I'm not just gonna sit there anymore while the _almighty Starbuck_ uses me as a punching bag to work out her _many_ issues. Life's too damn short."

"I frakking _hate_ you." She seethed glaring right at him.

"The feeling's mutual, _sweetheart_." He closed his eyes and dropped his head back against the wall with a thud.

A good amount of time later he spoke to her again. "How long have we been in here?"

"Three hours." She replied coldly.

"Great."

"I have CAP in ten."

"I think it's safe to say that you'll be excused." He said and then watched as she scoffed in disbelief. "What? You will. I'm in pretty good with the guy that makes the schedules." He teased. "I'll just put Frosty with Max in your place."

"Don't put _Frosty _with her. Neither one of them can follow a patrol schedule to save their lives….." She shivered slightly. "Put her with Joker."

Lee went over the lineup in his head and saw the logic in her suggestion. "I will." He said looking at her. "Thanks."

She made no move of recognition and didn't answer. They sat there in silence for a few minutes until she spoke. "You think it's one-sided? Is that it, Lee?" She explained further as she saw him turn to her with questioning eyes. "The anger?"

"No, I don't." He admitted.

"Because it's not, you're just as angry with me."

"Kara! For frak's sake, _shut up_. I just agreed with you."

"Why?" She pleaded. "Why are you so angry with me?"

He chuckled in total exasperation. "Gods. Woman, you really are gonna be the death of me, or at least my sanity. Are you really that oblivious or are you just so self-centered that you can't think about anybody else?"

"What, Baltar? Gods, Lee, _get over it_. I'm not the first girl in the universe to get drunk and have sex with someone that they didn't even like because they couldn't……." She trailed off.

He looked at her, softly intrigued. "Couldn't what?"

"Nothing." She grimaced, remembering the name that had escaped from her lips at that inopportune time. "Never mind."

He was quiet for a moment. "It wasn't Baltar." He told her. "I don't understand how you could think so low of yourself as to sleep with a sleaze like that, but still, I came to terms with your self-destructive side a long time ago."

"Then what? What exactly is your damn problem?"

"You just _left_!" He screamed at her.

She closed her eyes, frustrated that she had to go over this again. "I'm sorry that I went AWOL, but that is _not_ what this is about. This is personal. This isn't about a CAG being angry with one of his pilots. If it were, you would just throw me in hack and be done with it. This is about _you_ punishing _me. _This goes way deeper than me deserting the fleet."

"I deserted the fleet too, Kara." He whispered sadly. "You deserted _me._"

"Lee…."

"You didn't even say anything! You could have said something, even if it was to tell me to go frak myself. But you didn't. There was just a flash and then you were gone. And that made me angry." He paused as the breath was hissing through his teeth. "And then you came back, and that made me pissed as hell."

"Excuse me?" She asked in shock.

"You just waltzed back in." He rasped harshly. "You were a hero because you had that rusted out piece of metal on your back, and you just expected it all to be forgiven, for everything to go back to normal. And you didn't even apologize."

"I'm sorry." She whispered.

"It's kinda late now."

"No." She whispered again. "That's not what I meant. I'm sorry that you think I have anything to apologize for."

His mouth dropped open and he looked at her in utter disbelief. "You don't think that you have _anything_ to apologize for?"

"Oh, no," She corrected. "I have plenty to apologize for. _Just not to you._ I don't have to apologize to you for anything. And I'd already tried apologizing to you once when I didn't have to. You didn't seem to notice."

"I noticed."

"Yeah, and then _you_ walked out on _me_ without a word. Well, I'm not apologizing again. I didn't do anything to you."

"No, of course not, I was just left behind to clean up _your_ mess."

"_My_ mess? Gods, Lee. You really do give me too much credit. It wasn't _my_ mess. And it wasn't yours. We were victims of circumstance. We were caught in a tug of war between two incredibly stubborn people that used our loyalties against each other."

"And my father got shot, the President got arrested, and I had to sit there with my hands _literally_ tied and watch both happen. While you missed out on all of it. You weren't around to see us suffer the consequences. And you didn't face any yourself."

She closed her eyes. "There were consequences." She muttered, almost to herself. "Just because _you_ weren't around to see them, that doesn't mean that they didn't exist."

"Great." He shuddered sarcastically. "So you're the long-suffering heroine, suffering long and heroically. And I'm just the pathetic loser-turned-traitor that you left behind."

"I was asked to do something, _and I did it_." She sneered back at him. "I didn't do it to hurt you. You can't sit there and say the same thing to me." She sighed. "Talk about not thinking of anybody but yourself."

He stared at her, confused until realization finally hit. "You're talking about what happened in the hangar deck." He stated matter-of-factly.

"Yeah, Lee." She paused before speaking again. "You stood there and you judged me and condemned me. You had no right to do that."

"I was an officer and you were my direct subordinate. I _did_ have a right. You've never had a superior officer judge and condemn you before?"

"I've never had a superior officer call me a whore before." She breathed out, shutting her eyes in pain. "Not even Tigh."

He looked at her, the hurt showing on her face now that he could see past her angry eyes. "You're right." He told her quietly.

She opened her eyes in surprise. "Excuse me?"

He turned his head from her and looked at his knee where he was tapping his finger. "I had no right to do that. I had no right to make you feel that way. Because I didn't do it because I was a CAG and you were a pilot. I did it because I was me and you were you. And I felt hurt and betrayed, and I had no right to feel that way. But I did."

He waited several minutes, expecting her to tear into him, but it never came.

When she finally spoke, it was off topic and it came in monotone. "It's cold in here."

"Yeah." He answered absently.

"Will you give me your jacket?"

He turned to look at her, his mouth hanging wide open. "The jacket that I'm _wearing_?"

"Yeah."

"No." He laughed at the gall of her.

"Why the hell--?" She shrugged in question.

"Because it's freezing in here! And you have a jacket already and if I give you my jacket, I would only be wearing my tanks."

"I can't believe you won't even—."

"I can't believe that you're asking me to! What even makes you think I give a frak if you're cold?"

"Fine." She sighed in resignation. "You just admitted that you treated me wrong. I guess I was just hoping that I could capitalize on your guilt." She shrugged. "I took a shot."

"Gods. You really have no shame, do you?"

"It _would_ be the gentlemanly thing to do."

"I guess I'm not a gentleman, then. Or I guess my gentility was exhausted when you came back and I didn't assign you a permanent home on the _Astral Queen._"

"I was just asking." She said quietly.

"Don't ask again."

"Alright." She returned coldly, returning her gaze to her lap. "So, we've established that you hurt me because I hurt you because you hurt me. Well….that's _mature._ Are we sure this is a Battlestar and not a playground?"

He banged the back of his head against the wall in frustration before answering. "I thought…….I thought you understood. You can't just run away like that, things are supposed to mean, _we're_ supposed to mean more than that."

"You didn't speak to your father for _two years_. That's not running away?"

"No, it was." He responded truthfully. "You really wanna use me as an example of the mature way to deal with strained relationships?"

"But you've gotten better. You were able to forgive your father for the coup, forgive the President for suborning mutiny. The only person that you can't seem to forgive is me."

Lee sighed sadly. "I forgave my father because I had already spent two years hating him for something that wasn't entirely his fault, and I forgave the President because……well, because it wasn't the first time somebody I cared about was ripped from me by somebody _else_ I cared about."

The words were out of his mouth before he truly grasped what he was saying. He saw her screw her eyes shut and bite her lip so hard that he thought she would draw blood. He saw a single tear slip out of her eye. "Kara, I didn't mean—."

"Yes, you did." She whispered out in a resigned, but raspy voice as she angrily wiped the tear away. "And I was wondering how long it wouldbe before that came up. You've never brought it up before, but I guess I never induced your ire that much until now. So why don't you just say it? Why don't you just say that you think I killed Zak?"

"I'm not gonna say it, because I don't think it. I said that to you just now because I knew it would hurt you and I'm sorry for that, but I don't think it."

"Lee." She said, looking at him in disbelief. "How can you not--?"

"He was a victim of circumstance too, Kara. We all were. You didn't kill him, I didn't kill him, and my father didn't kill him. Nobody did one big thing that equaled the death of Zak Adama. It was about 5,000 little things that 50 different people did, and not one of them ever thought that the result would be what it was. They never believed that the things that they did would converge with the things that other people did." Lee took a deep breath. "Nobody put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger. They just pulled strings, or let things slide, or gave second chances, or turned their heads."

"But I was the one that put the nail in his coffin." She spoke in shame and closed her eyes.

"Why? Because you wrote the word 'pass' on the top of his eval?" Lee paused, and when he spoke again, his voice dropped to a near whisper. "Did I ever tell you that I saw your boss right before Zak died?"

Kara opened her eyes, startled at his change in tone. "Which one? Major Markinson?"

"Yeah. He came on board the _Atlantia_ to oversee some test-flights that we were conducting. I was the pilot. He introduced himself to me because he knew my father." She saw him wince as he continued. "I asked how Zak was doing. Markinson said that he was 'getting stronger' and that he'd eventually get over his problems. I started to get nervous and I asked him if everything was alright. He told me that everything _would be_, and that Zak was getting 'extra-special attention' from one of his instructors, and then he winked." Lee's previously stony face creased in the smallest of smiles. "I think he knew about the two of you."

"He probably did." She answered truthfully. "He was a pretty perceptive guy."

Lee closed his eyes and took a deep breath. "Then I asked him if Zak was in over his head." His voice caught in his throat. "And he patted my shoulder and told me not to worry. 'We'd never let Husker Adama's son wash out of flight school'."

Kara buried her face in her hands.

"That's why I never blamed you, Kara. If it hadn't been you, it would have been somebody else." He looked straight at her, but she still held her face in her hands. "At least you did it because you loved him, and not because of how it would look to other people." She finally looked at him, her eyes threatening to shed tears. "Nobody ever thought anything that horrible would happen. We were stupid and naïve and we didn't believe that the universe could be that cruel….I guess we know different now."

He saw her take several shuddering breaths over the course of a few minutes before she found the voice to speak. "So why is this…..why is this happening now? We were fine. For weeks we were fine. And now we're at each others throats. Why?"

He thought for a moment. "I guess the honeymoon's over. All this stuff was always there, we were just so happy to see each other, just so happy that we were all still breathing, that we were able to push everything down. Well, enough time has passed, and it's all coming to the surface now."

"The President and the Old Man have forgiven each other. They're getting along great; they're not fighting like we are."

Lee chuckled wistfully. "Yeah, well I guess we don't care about each other as much as they do." He shut his eyes and let his head fall down to his chest at the absurdity of his own remark.

She laughed too. "We better get over it soon. We're gonna tear this ship apart if we don't."

"Maybe it was a blessing that we got locked in this room."

"Why?"

"Because now we have to work this out. Because you can't run off to the other side of the galaxy again, and I can't go two years without seeing you this time."

"Because you can't do that on a Battlestar." She teased.

"Because it would kill me." He looked at her and saw how her body jerked and her eyes moistened at the response. "You're not expendable, Thrace. You understand that? We can't cut you out. You get under our skin, like a damn infection." He smiled. "How else would you explain all the headaches and ulcers and sleepless nights that you cause? Sometimes I wish I _could_ take a pill and be rid of you. But I've gotten used to you, so I guess I'm stuck. It's incurable."

"Lee…I…."

He saw her try to come up with the words and decided to give her a reprieve. "You know why else we're mad at each other?" He saw her shake her head. "Because the rest of it is all so inconsequential; I could go run off with Dee, or somebody else that wasn't as maddening as you, but also not half as satisfying. And you could hook up with Baltar again…." He heard her snort. "Or go back for your guy from Caprica, or do something about that flirtation that you're having with the Raptor pilot from the _Pegasus_ that you think I don't notice—." He saw her start to explain, but held up his hands to stop her. "But it doesn't matter, because—."

"Because…" She finished for him. "Because at the end of the day, there is just gonna be _this_." She pointed back and forth between the two of them. "Because we're the only ones that _get it._" She smirked wistfully. "And maybe the reason that we're so mad at each other is because…. we spend so much time and energy projecting this image, and it pisses us off when someone can see through it so easily to what's really there."

He nodded.

"Lee? I don't know…..I feel like there is something…..I just mean….."

"Hey. I'm tired." He smiled. "Let's do this some other time, okay?"

Kara breathed a small sigh, half relieved and half frustrated that she wouldn't have to get into it with him right then. "Okay." She smiled. "At least if we leave this unfinished it means we have to talk to each other when this is all over with."

He smiled back at her and closed his eyes. "Go to sleep, Kara."

"Yes, sir."

Twenty minutes later she knew she would not sleep, and she knew by the rustling from his corner that he was not yet asleep either.

"Are you awake?" He whispered at her, his eyes still closed.

"No." She sighed. "I'm sound asleep. Because this is a frakking five-star luxury hotel and not a freezing, hard, metal storage room with a gaping hole in its side."

He chuckled. "We have to sleep. If we don't, do you have any idea how miserable we'll be for the next—." He looked at his watch. "Eight hours and twenty minutes?"

"You have any sleeping pills hidden in your jacket?"

"No."

"Well it's too damn cold to sleep without any narcotic help."

"I'm still not giving you my jacket." He teased.

"Alright." She grinned back.

"But I do have an idea……it would make us warmer." He said hesitantly.

She looked at him curiously. "Go on."

"We could stack up these crates in the corner over there. That would at least block the draft."

"I still don't see how that would make us warmer."

"We could sleep behind the crates. If we put the crates close to the wall, we could sleep in between them."

"_We_ could?"

"It would make us warmer. Close proximity, body heat, etc. etc."

"Uh-huh. See? I always knew that someday you'd find a way to sleep with me." She teased. "You probably _did_ see that sign on the door, but closed it anyway on the off chance that we'd be put in this situation and your sub-conscious fantasies could play out."

"Don't be a brat. If it meant not being so frakking cold, I'd sleep with Hotdog." He saw her eyes narrow in doubt. "Okay, maybe not Hotdog, but you get the idea. This is about comfort, not about wanting to jump your bones." He said standing up.

"Alright." She said rising to join him.

His head jerked at her acceptance of his proposal. "You sure?" He questioned nervously.

"Yeah." She laughed. "After all, you're not the first guy that I've slept with for comfort's sake." She saw his jaw clench and she grimaced as she shut her eyes. "Forget I said that."

"Okay." He stuttered as he went to move the crates. "I promise I'll be a gentleman."

"But you just said that you weren't." She watched him finish creating their barrier against the cold. "Oh, I'm sure you'd _intend_ to be…" She went over to the corner. "But I don't know that you'll be able to resist me." She smiled as she laid down on the floor.

He looked down at her as she grinned up at him, her hands behind her head. "I was always able to before." He told her.

She looked up at him inquiringly. "What do you mean?"

He winced slightly. "Nothing." He said as he laid down next to her. "Never mind."

The area was small. She laid up against the wall, he laid with his back toward the open air. They spent several moments adjusting and then finally settled into comfortable positions.

"Lee?" She asked apprehensively.

"Yeah, Kara?" He replied, closing his eyes.

"I'm just wondering... If you say you can resist me, then why is your hand on my chest?"

"It's not _on _your chest, it's _resting_ there."

"Could you move it, please?"

"Kara. I'm tired, I'm hungry, I'm cold, I'm crammed in a three foot space with another person, and I've been trapped in this room with _you_ for four hours. If I find a soft spot to rest my hand, I'm not moving it."

"Fine." She breathed deep and closed her eyes…………..

Sometime later, neither one knew how long, they came awake slowly, unsure what was real and what was a dream.

They had gone to sleep touching; shared body heat wouldn't have worked any other way. But they awoke connected by arms and limbs, a tangled mass, not sure where one ended and the other began. He was laying on top of her, his face buried in the crook of her neck. Her right hand was clutched in between them in the fabric of his shirt; her left hand was embedded in the short strands of his scalp.

"Mmm." She mumbled sleepily. "You smell nice."

"You feel good." He breathed softly as his dreamy daze led his mouth across the line of her jaw. Not kissing it so much, just brushing his lips along the curve; his stubbled cheek grazing her smooth skin.

"That tickles." She giggled breathily, her eyes still closed.

Her laugh brought them both to lucidity. Given the fact that their dreams frequently consisted of moments like this; neither one of them realized that this was, in fact, _real_. At least not until their eyes fluttered open at the exact same time and they locked gazes.

Her hand went lax in his hair, and she took as deep a breath as his strong, steady weight above her would allow.

"Hi." She whispered up at him.

"Hi." He whispered back. He stared at her with an intense curiosity, like she was a totally new person, not the Kara that he had known for years. His mouth was still inches from hers.

"You're on top of me." She stated matter-of-factly.

"Yeah," He stuttered back. "I….I'm…..I don't know……I'm sorry…..I'll move." He finally stated firmly as his body went to comply.

"No." She said, digging her fingers into his sculpted upper arms to keep him in place. "Don't."

"Kara…" He sighed apprehensively.

"Don't take it to mean anything more than what it is." She closed her eyes. "It's just, you're warm, and if you move, I'll get cold again."

He knew the tempting path of destruction that staying in his current position would lead him down. But despite the low temperature of the room, this was the warmest he'd felt in months. And the soft comfort of her was too much for his disillusioned body to pull away from. He settled back against her. "Okay."

She thought that one word was the sexiest, most satisfying word that had ever been uttered. She lay there, basking in the feel of his closeness. Somehow, without either one noticing or intending to, they pulled closer together. Everything felt surreal; everything felt other-worldly, especially what she was feeling inside. It always did when she was with him.

Then she adjusted her position slightly and felt something more…….um, _tangible,_ pressing against her hip.

He must have noticed that she noticed because he grinned a miniscule, sheepish grin. "Um, maybe I will move after all."

Her eyes got wide and she chewed her lip to hide her smile and rein in the pride that she felt knowing that she had caused that effect in him.

When he moved from over her and laid down beside her, a low whimper escaped from the back of her throat and she shivered, wrapping her arms around herself.

He noticed her returned lack of comfort and pulled his upper body up so that he could take off his jacket. "Here." He said as he laid his garment on top of her before laying back down and looking up at the ceiling.

"Thank you." She sighed, looking over at him as she pulled the jacket up around her neck. "So are you a gentleman now?"

He smiled slightly but still didn't look at her. "I'm kind of overly hot at the moment, which I guess means that I'm definitely _not_ a gentleman." He sighed.

"What did you mean earlier?" She saw him look at her in confusion and decided to explain further. "When you said you were able to resist me before? _When_ before?"

Lee let his voice and his heart take over. He knew that if his mind was still in control, he would never allow himself to tell her the true answer. "Some days, I would see you; I'd be with you all day. It didn't matter how I saw you, where or when. It could be at the base: watching you scream and punch, yell, throw things, curse and tell dirty jokes. Or it could be with Zak: looking like some sort of goddess, sitting on his lap, whispering in his ear, kissing him, smiling at him." He breathed deep."Some nights I'd come home with crescent shaped wounds on my skin where I had to dig my fingernails into my palms. As if the sting was the only thing that stopped me, that allowed me to resist you. You didn't even realize that you were doing it to me. I had to cause myself pain, I wanted you so badly. But I didn't do it; I _couldn't_ do it, because as much as I wanted you……I loved Zak just as much. So I stopped myself. Some days it took all I had, some days it damn near killed me, but I resisted you." He paused and looked at his palms, still able to find the faint scars if he looked hard enough. "You probably have no idea what that felt like."

She chuckled lowly in the back of her throat and then sighed. "Gods, you really are so frakking clueless sometimes that it astounds me." She looked over at him sadly. "Lets just pretend that I _do _know what that felt like." She looked back up at the ceiling and drew his jacket tighter around herself.

He continued to stare at her. "What did _you_ mean before?"

"When?"

"When you said that 'you weren't the first girl to sleep with somebody because they couldn't…….'? You never finished that sentence."

"Maybe it's best that I left it unfinished."

"Come on, Starbuck. That's not fair. I just bared my soul to you, the least that you could do is use complete sentences. I mean—."

"Sleep with the person that they really wanted to." She finished the sentence. "That's what I was going to say."

"Who did you really want to sleep with?" He whispered.

She looked at him, her entire being laid out before him; all of her insecurities, all of her guilt, all of her defenses. "You really don't know?"

"I know." He stopped. "_Now_ I know. I just want to hear you say it. I've been waiting since the day I met you to hear you say it." But he knew she wouldn't. She just looked at him, her face expressionless, but her eyes speaking volumes. He thought about the card game with Baltar the day after the party. The doctor's taunting, wounded words now making sense: _You can't compete with me, I always win. Maybe you'd like to sit next to Captain Adama? _He again looked to the ceiling. "Wow."

"Yeah." She sighed.

He thought about his harsh words to her that day in the hangar and the fresh sting of his venom was overwhelming to _him._ He couldn't imagine what it must have been like for _her_ to hear those words coming from one of the few people that she had ever allowed herself to trust. _Gods, no wonder she hit you._ He turned to face her and traced his finger down the side of her face. "You wouldn't have left, would you?" She looked at him as he continued. "I know you have faith. I know you believe in the gods, 'all of this has happened before, all of this will happen again'. I know you want to find Earth. But if I hadn't been a jealous, judgmental idiot, if you hadn't thought that I hated you, and if you hadn't thought that my father had betrayed you by lying………would you have gone?"

They laid there in silence until he was sure that she wouldn't answer before she spoke. "No." She answered. And in a strange move, she held up her hand and gingerly caressed the space in between her knuckles. "Things got too hard, so I ran. Isn't that funny? Everything gets destroyed, the world ends, and I run out to meet it at full force. But the Adama boys hurt my feelings and it's too much for me to deal with. So I ran, because that's what I do."

He laughed a low, rumbling laugh that reverberated in his chest. "Yeah, you're gonna have to stop doing that."

They stayed silent for a few moments before she hesitantly started again. "I was watching when Zak died. I saw his plane explode, saw it burst into flames in mid-air. I _knew_ he was dead. There was no doubt, because I saw it with my own eyes." He saw her eyes fill with moisture. "Then, the day of the attack, I only _thought_ you were dead. I didn't see it, I had no proof. Hell, I wasn't really even _told_…….all Tyrol said was 'I don't know if you've heard about Apollo'. Everything was such a mess that day, nobody really knew what was going on. It was all so uncertain, it was all so ambiguous. But the pain I felt at _knowing_ that Zak was dead didn't even compare to the pain I felt at _thinking _that you were." She paused and covered her eyes with her hands. "I don't even know what kind of horrible person that makes me."

"That doesn't make you a horrible person." He whispered honestly.

"You felt betrayed by me going to bed with Baltar? Well, maybe I did betray you. But I betrayed Zak, too. Not by the physicality of it, gods know I've slept with other guys…….but because that night was the first night since Zak that I ever gave myself over to anybody else." She chuckled wryly. "And the frakked up thing is that it wasn't even the person I was in bed with."

Lee slowly moved across the short distance between them to where he was half on top of her again and entwined their fingers. "It's not betrayal, Kara. Zak's dead. I loved him and you loved him, but he's _dead_. He's gone, and so is everybody and everything else. It's just you and me, alone in the cold. Do you really want us to keep denying ourselves what we both want, what we both _need_, just because we think it will somehow honor the memory of the dead? Do you really want us to keep resenting and hating each other just because we both believe in our confused, guilty little minds that this is what Zak would want? We resisted each other for so long because we both loved Zak. Don't you think _he _loved _us_ enough to allow us to be happy?"

He was so close to her face that his breath teased her eyelashes. She gently closed her eyes and he saw a single tear fall down her soft cheek. He brushed it away. He resigned himself to the fact that she needed time to process what he had just said, to acclimate herself to the new world that all of this would open. He reluctantly moved off of her and started to separate their hands, but she held onto it firmly.

"You know Lt. Garris?" She asked.

"One of the transfers. Yeah, I know him. The guy's an idiot."

"He's from the _Pegasus._ Of course he's an idiot." She laughed before she continued. "A couple of days ago, he asked me why you and I hated each other, why we fought all the time."

"And what did you tell him?" He grinned at her.

She smiled back with the most beautiful, devious smile and took his jacket and put half of it over him as she moved closer. "I told him it was because you were arrogant and I was insubordinate. I was too afraid to tell him the truth."

"And what's the truth?"

"That you don't fight with someone unless you care about them. If they don't mean anything to you, if you're indifferent…… fighting isn't worth the time, the energy, or the breath." She said as she tentatively moved their joined hands to lay on his chest.

"Yeah." He sighed, closing his eyes. "The day you stop fighting with me is the day I'm gonna die. I could live for another fifty years, but the day I'm not important enough to incur your wrath is the day my life is truly over."

"You don't bother fighting like that unless on some level, you love the person." She said as she rubbed her thumb against his palm.

"Passionately, I'd say." Lee chuckled as he brought their hands closer to his heart. "Where do you think all the hate comes from?"

"Lee?" She said softly.

"Yeah, Kara?"

"I don't…._exactly_ hate you." She whispered firmly, reverently.

"I know, Kara." He gripped her hand tighter. "I don't _exactly_ hate you either."

-finis


End file.
